


Office Wear

by foreverhalffull



Category: Cormoran Strike Series - Robert Galbraith
Genre: Barclacott is my favorite... er... friendship, Friendship, Gen, Gift Giving, Sam Barclay is a good bro, Validation, and i love him, death to the patriarchy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-04
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-09 19:53:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 905
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27871849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foreverhalffull/pseuds/foreverhalffull
Summary: For Robin Ellacott's thirtieth birthday, Sam gets presents for the entire office.
Relationships: Sam Barclay & Robin Ellacott
Comments: 23
Kudos: 45





	Office Wear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [foreverhalffull](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foreverhalffull/gifts).



> Is this absolutely out of character? Yes. Do I give a ****? No, because Sam Barclay is the best character to ever be created in all of fiction and I had this idea in the shower today and it was too sweet not to write. At first I felt awk because it's not Robin's birthday anymore and it isn't connected to any challenge, or requested by literally anyone, it's just what my heart desired but then I was like... bro... that's the point of fanfic and thus no one has to give me permission to play with my fiction frens; I can write this even if I'm the only one who likes it, so here you goooo!

As Robin adjourned the staff meeting, eager to go home and rinse off the inevitable grime of a night’s surveillance spent in the Land Rover, Barclay rose from his seat and urged everyone to stay for another minute. Pat rolled her chair back from Robin’s old desk obediently, pre-emptively, even, so that Sam could duck underneath. He emerged with a number of parcels wrapped in old Christmas paper and one donned in balloons and teddies and “Baby’s first birthday!” banners, which he passed to Robin.

He checked the undersides of the others before passing them to their proper recipients, keeping one for himself, as well.

“As ye ken, tomorrow is the boss’s birthday.” He grinned cheekily at Robin, such that she began to worry what precisely he had up his sleeve.

“So I’ve got us all presents tae celebrate! Sorry fer the age o’ the wrappin’.”

“Should we let Robin open hers first, or…?” Strike seemed vaguely put out by the fact that he had not been the first to give Robin a gift, a skill he’d been determined to improve since she’d made him aware of his inconsideration on the evening of Valentine’s.

“Reckon it’ll make the most sense if we all open at the same time.” Beneath Barclay’s friendly smile was a faint air of nervousness, as if he worried he’d been off the mark with the gift.

He hadn’t been. Robin smiled at her own, but laughed aloud when she saw what Barclay had given the men. Each detective had received a black shirt with bold white lettering, but while Robin’s said simply “Detective,” Barclay, Hutchins, and Strike were the new owners of shirts bearing the phrase “Man Detective.”

Sam hadn’t left Pat out, either; though she was in actuality the agency’s office manager, he had gifted her a shirt which read “Boss.” He had taken recently to excessive flattery of her ability to keep the agency – but primarily himself – running properly, in hopes that his appreciation would absolve his consistently late expenses forms.

“It’s a thing they did at Nat’s work the other month,” he explained. “She and her female colleagues are always bein’ called nurses, or when they correct the patients, they get called a ‘woman doctor’ or ‘lady surgeon’ or some shite. So the men on their floor got together and ordered scrub caps that say ‘man doctor,’ to prove, I guess, that if it sounds unnatural tae point out fer a man, ye donnae need tae be sayin’ it about a woman.”

Pat was giving the back of Sam’s prematurely grey head the fondest look Robin had ever seen her deliver to their employee. Barclay’s ears began to turn pink, and he cleared his throat. “I’d no’ really given much thought to it in the agency, cos, well…” he grinned at his boss. “Robin’s feckin ace, ye cannae help but see it. But I thought it would be a nice gesture, anyway.”

Robin was nearly teary but had a reputation to uphold, of course, so she shoved a bit of the fondness for her colleague into the back of her mind as she stood on her tiptoes to wrap her arms around his neck.

“Thanks, Sam.” She looked down at the shirt in her hands as she pulled away. “It’s perfect.”

“Almost perfect,” Strike corrected. “Where the bloody hell are we meant to wear these? Not exactly covert to be out on surveillance with a shirt that says ‘detective.’”

“And I suppose you don’t have much of a casual Friday at a detective agency,” Pat mused. “First thing me husband said to me, when I told him I’d taken this job. I said getting to wear jeans once a week was hardly enough to look forward to in life.”

Robin snorted, remembering the offices where a loosening of dress code had been akin to a primary school field trip, and the husband who had lived and would die by that life, by that small-but-steady-but-safe Friday rush with its predictable rhythm and predictably generous pay.

“Could be a good fake-out, though,” Andy offered. “No one would expect a detective to be wearing a detective shirt. Like a cover, but it’s the truth.”

“Or you could always wear it as an undershirt,” Robin suggested to Strike. “Since you — I’m sure you could always use another.” It was her turn, now, to display pinkened ears, which were tactfully ignored by her colleagues.

She pivoted back to Barclay. “Thanks again, Sam. This is – I’m really touched.”

“Nae problem, Robs. Happy early birthday.”

A chorus of birthday wishes rang out around the outer office, until Strike stood from his chair and casually disbanded the group. 

“Right, off home and to bed with you, Detective,” he said to Robin. “Hutchins, if you want to step into my office, I can show you the equipment you were asking about.”

Robin tucked her new shirt into her work bag and left the office with a subtle spring in her step which not only did not fit her sleep-deprived state, but which had not been present before. She felt subtly more seen, subtly validated, not only by the gift but by the affirmation her sub-contractor had delivered alongside it: that the idea of someone looking down on her out of sexism, though she had certainly felt it over the previous year, had not even occurred to him, because _Robin’s feckin’ ace, ye cannae help but see it._


End file.
